Chelsea have a mountain to climb in the Champions League against Real Madrid
Frank Lampard has urged his team to turn the tide and mount a comeback in second-leg of the UEFA Champions League quarter-final when Chelsea host Real Madrid on April 18.
Although there is little prospect of a comeback after the Blues’ 2-0 loss against the Spanish team, Lampard feels there is still an opportunity and challenges his players to alter the narrative.
Madrid remained a danger for most of the game, but the Blues did demonstrate that they had opportunities but spurned them. Joao Felix had a chance to open the scoring for Chelsea early on, but Thibaut Courotis prevented his attempt. Raheem Sterling also came close to scoring for the Blues.
Karim Benzema’s goal for Madrid in the 21st minute broke the scoreless tie, while Marco Asensio’s low shot in the 74th minute doubled Madrid’s advantage.
Chelsea have now gone four games without scoring for the first time since 1993. (h/t Independent), Lampard advised players to use every opportunity and remarked during the post-game news conference that:
“It’s a big challenge of course, playing against a team of the quality of Real Madrid. The door is open; it’s up to us if we want to kick it open further. We have to believe. I have to be the first one to believe this is possible.”
It will be extremely difficult for Blues, we must have faith that we will prevail since we have staged a comeback. One instance from last season included us losing the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 3-1 but coming close to winning the match in the second leg at the Bernabeu. We would have qualified if it wasn’t for two late goals from Madrid to win the second leg 3-2.
The club’s finest comeback was against Napoli in the 2011–12 season, when they lost the first leg 3–1, but fought on to win the second leg 4–1 and the match 5–4 on aggregate.
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A 2-0 scoreline automatically looks very timid if the chasing team scores early. One goal in the first half and the Stamford Bridge faithful will be on top of the opposition. It’s just about scoring once and then taking it from there.
That is proving to be an impossible task for us. We have not scored a single goal in any of the four games across competitions we have played this month.